Bangalore, March 21:
Karnataka on Monday banned plantation of Eucalyptus and Acasia on forest land in a bid to discourage monoculture forests due to the ecological damages these species cause, the State Government said today.

The Government has issued a circular that eucalyptus and acasia plantations cannot be taken up on forest lands as they cause water table depletion and erode soil fertility, Mr C.H. Vijayashankar, Karnataka Minister for Forest, told reporters. The Government would soon identify the species of plants that would be encouraged for plantation by farmers under the subsidy scheme, he said. The Government has also banned use of lands owned by Forest Development Corporation for growing pulp and eucalyptus for industrial use, he added. Following the ban, the Forest Department, which had a practice of raising eucalyptus and acasia as separate plantations, will have to abandon it.The Government had on February 4 banned eucalyptus cultivation in Malnad and semi-Malnad areas. The Government has already set out guidelines for raising eucalyptus plantation in dry zones.

(This article was published in the Business Line print edition dated March 22, 2011)

Saturday, March 19, 2011

While walking back to the parking lot from the IISc run, I saw a humungous beehive! I did not have my camera with me though, hence could not capture the impressive lattice work. Imagine my delight, when the following sunday, while running at Cubbon park, i saw yet another beehive, quite like the first. Must be the season!

If you peer closely at the 'gaps' you can see the hexagonal cells of the honeycomb.

March is when I start keeping a lookout for the presence of buds on trees.. the first ones of spring. Gone are the winter bloomers - the bottlebrushes and the Millintonia Hortensis and the roses in the parks. Its time for the reds, the yellows and the pinks!

Sadly the start of the spring was marked by the fall of a neighbourhood tree, one i had blogged about previously. We could not sleep much the night of the 2nd of March, there was a strange wiring sound in the wee hours of the morning. I thought it was a bike (or several) starting up, but later realised it was the device that the corporation uses to chop branches.

This tree had fallen sometime in the night. By morning it was all chopped up, clearing way for the stream of traffic around the corner. It came as no wonder that the tree fell - one side of it had been done away completely earlier, to make way for the building. It is a wonder how it stood lopsided for so long. The same fate unfortunately awaits all of the trees in this stretch, whose branches are allowed to grow only on one side, upsetting their natural balance.

Monday, March 7, 2011

This last Sunday saw several of us participate in the 10km run organized at the IISc (Indian Institute of Science) campus. I went, not just for the joy of walking/running, but also to see the campus. It was lovely! Trees everywhere, lining most of the paths we ran through.
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